Strategies for Adapting to the New World

The forum of leading global policymakers of the developed and emerging countries in recent years has addressed several strategic themes that challenge Algeria today. These included and were not limited to issues such as the 4th Industrial Revolution, Climate, Migration, Energy and the impacts of terrorism. In Strategies for Adapting to the New World, Prof. Klaus Schwab, president and founder of the World Economic Forum, said: “The 4th Industrial Revolution refers to the fusion of technologies, especially in the digital world, which has significant effects on the political, economic and social systems, it will be a matter to establish a system of common understanding of this industrial revolution”. We shall see such varied themes as to how our lives are to be changed by this Revolution, how business structures will be modified by the new technologies and how rapid technological change will revolutionise work such as what is the future of financial services, how to restart the global economy. Debates about the possible impact of intelligence on defence systems and the future of fuel energy on climate change will take a different meaning. Facing the New World Revolution in 2020 through 2040, including the development of Artificial Intelligence and digital transformation, Algeria has so much to do in the political, security, social, cultural and economic fields of adaptation strategies, if it wants to avoid its marginalisation.
For François-Xavier Sambron, Government institutions and businesses spend a lot of time and energy managing tasks daily, whether it is prioritising, planning over time or overseeing routine workloads. Although familiar, this exercise is nonetheless complicated and ineffective, while efficiency implies breaking down its tasks. In this context, according to this author, we have six digital impacts that revolutionise the function of a political and economic manager, see “My Business-Digital” – February 2018.
First, in traditional management, the manager’s power resided primarily in his ability to distribute or maintain information. This situation is reminded to us by the famous adage that “information is power”. Today, it derives its legitimacy from its ability to link and interconnect collaborators and services among themselves, and its ability to synthesise and sort through the profusion of information received to extract the essentials. This method is exceeded because the “New Generation” manager gives priority to sharing and transparency, looking for above all to empower its employees by opening doors and guiding them in the right direction. By greatly facilitating the flow of information within the company, digitalising is both the primary trigger and contributor to the so-called collaborative management.
Secondly, the manager has to be-first a developer of collective intelligence, a leader, a facilitator, thanks to the information is now widely shared, like not the one who knows but the one who pulls his team. He is the host of a team that seeks to fulfil its objectives by taking maximum advantage of the resources of the company, Putting Interacting with different skills to create value.
Thirdly, the vertical authority based on the hierarchical organisation of the company and the status of the collaborators gradually gives way to a horizontal authority based on the knowledge, competence and reputation of each. The company is now governed by two Forms of authority that act in parallel, one falling within the processes and priorities defined by the management, the other translating the competence of each collaborator. In this context, the manager must rebuild his power horizontally both to communicate and to identify skills, to value them and to organise them and contrary to the past, his leadership is no longer expressed vertically but Horizontally.
Fourth, thanks to the digital revolution, the manager now has a wide variety of tools that allow him to send the right message at the right time to the right collaborator. Whether it is via messaging (instant or not), social networks, collaborative platforms, sending SMS, etc. Besides, the multimedia capabilities of these different means of communication (audio, video, animation) Facilitate the dialogue and encourage the feedback of the collaborators.
Fifth, for the effectiveness of an organisation, new tools such as collaborative applications, project management solutions, business or administrative workflows, etc., make it possible to set and share priorities and objectives, and to ensure the detailed planning of the tasks to be performed as well as the progress of the latter. At the level of the activity monitoring, the digital usually provides many elements of measurement used in its evaluation as to the identification of its malfunctions. The introduction of quantifiable indicators (productivity, costs, quality, deadlines) enables monitoring of the activity over the water and the rapid initiation of corrective actions in case of discrepancies. Thanks to this continuous supervision, the manager is now in a capacity to steer his team finely as each of its members and to follow up the fixed course.
Sixth, technologically, the digital transformation of a company takes place primarily regarding the human resource, pillar of management, making it necessary to accompany all the collaborators in a transition of which they will be the main actors. In this context, the manager occupies the first role to engage his team in this significant project and encourage each employee to take their place in front of Explain the merits of these changes, reassure the collaborators about their future and value the role of each in this mutation.
In conclusion
Political, entrepreneurs, researchers, ordinary citizens, we all live today in a society of electronic communication, plural and immediate that compels us to make decisions in real time. The control of time being the primary challenge of this century, any inadequacy of these mutations would further isolate the country. It, therefore, needs an adaptation strategy in the face of new global and energy changes with the advent of the Fourth Economic Revolution that will be based on digital, technological news, green industries with an energy mix between 2020 through 2040. As the world advances, artificial intelligence and digital revolutionising both international relations, the management of States, institutions, businesses and relationships that are personal, many leaders could need a Cultural Revolution (an upgrade) to adapt to the arcane of the new economy. The majority of organisations must move away from the utopian patterns of the past of the years 1970 through 1990 and be ready at the dawn of a veritable planetary revolution. Emerging countries have no future if they do not promote good governance and the knowledge economy, which must adapt to these new mutations, the two fundamental pillars of the development of the 21st century. For Algeria, the 2016 – 2018 World Economic Forum report is far from the country’s vast potential has a lesson nevertheless to be learned; that is the balance sheet is very mixed despite the importance of public spending. Furthermore, and according to an OECD report, Algeria would spend twice as much to have twice as many results as compared to similar countries in the MENA region.
Algeria suffers from a closed business environment that is believed to be resolved by legislation when it comes to tackling functioning of a business company: a bureaucratic financial system and an inadequate socio-educational system together land transactions, for instance, tend to be causing high costs. There is still much work to be done, referring to political, social, cultural and economic factors to liberate creative energies, to attract the real creators of local and international private wealth confronted with the bureaucratic burden and the lack of visibility and coherence of socio-economic policy. This implies a specific strategic objective, adapting to the new World at least ten years and another governmental, institutional organisation around essential ministries and large regional eco-poles. Some would still choose the wrong way in their economic policy, which could lead the country to a stalemate and considerable financial losses, by ignoring the new global mutations. It is thus, necessary to go for a new model of consumption, because of the significant strategic error of reasoning at the global level in a linear consumption model, and not continue to live from the illusion of the material age. This would urgently require some cultural change of all business leaders. I would draw the Government’s attention to the non-coherent current policy that may lead the country to accelerate its foreign exchange reserves’ depletion, without however sorting out the real problems of the country’s development. It is all about the technological and managerial accumulation within the framework of the values of financial capital as only one way to avoid monetary illusion.